Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Eeeee-vil

When I was a kid, I read the Bantam Books paperback versions of the Doc Savage stories that originally appeared in pulp magazines in the nineteen-thirties. The heroic Doc, a paragon of human achievement, fought mad scientists, loathsome dictators, criminal masterminds, and nefarious schemers, all bent on taking over the world. But when the stories needed something really scary, you know where they went:

That's right - get lost, Lex Luthor! Take a hike, Joker! The baddest villain around is The Evil Gnome.

Okay, this sinister adversary was actually just a short guy who was into throat-slashing and remote decapitation, and not a real gnome. But that's the cachet of gnomepunk: it turns a little bad guy into major badass, with nothing but a name change.